


Growing Pains

by mean_whale



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10079522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mean_whale/pseuds/mean_whale
Summary: Oikawa and Iwaizumi have been friends for years. Their feelings are wide and strong, and sometimes even they themselves don't really understand what they mean.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a birthday gift for [Pups](https://twitter.com/thispuppyflies)!

The day had been unusually hot, making practise sweatier than typical, and Oikawa had never been so glad to take a shower. The water washed away each drop of sweat from his skin, flattening his hair on his head, and he hummed happily as the feeling of being refreshed took over him. He turned off the shower, wiped excess water off his face, and headed for his towel.

He emerged to the locker room, wiping his hair. He was – once again – one of the last people to leave. Yahaba left the room shortly after Oikawa had settled on a bench, and the room was left in silence.

Oikawa looked up at Iwaizumi only to find him frowning at him.

“What is it, Iwa-chan?” he asked nonchalantly and started getting dressed slowly.

The other boy didn’t say anything, merely sniffed, and Oikawa let him be. It was too hot to tease him, even if it would have been just the perfect situation.

Agitating his best friend was a lot of fun. Oikawa knew that Iwaizumi was never truly hurt, never really angry. It was all pretence from both sides; Oikawa didn’t mean it, and neither did Iwaizumi.

Before pulling on his shirt or slacks, Oikawa turned to look at Iwaizumi again, spreading his legs just slightly and striking a pose.

“Why don’t you take a picture,” he said with a wink. “It’ll last longer.”

Iwaizumi growled and looked away. Oikawa giggled silently, not really willing to take the joke further right then. Instead he stood up to pull up the slacks that were starting to droop on his hips.

“How much weight have you lost?” Iwaizumi asked.

Oikawa snapped his head towards the other boy, completely unprepared for the question. He blinked a few times, taking in the displeased frown on his friend’s face before smirking.

“Not much at all, Iwa-chan,” he said and laughed. “My clothes are stretching!”

“I’m not an idiot,” Iwaizumi replied, but didn’t push it.

Oikawa put on his shirt, glancing at Iwaizumi every now and then.

“Do you think Mattsun and Makki are dating?” Oikawa asked.

Iwaizumi looked at him thoughtfully.

“Why?” he asked.

Oikawa shrugged.

“They’ve been leaving together,” he explained.

“So are we,” Iwaizumi pointed out.

Oikawa pouted.

“Not like that, Iwa-chan!” he said. “I mean that they’ve been leaving alone, without us.”

“It’s no wonder when you take half a day to get dressed,” Iwaizumi quipped.

“I’m not slow!” Oikawa argued and packed his sweaty volleyball gear away. “They’re just sneaking around. It’s suspicious.”

“Maybe they committed a crime together,” Iwaizumi said.

He sounded bored. Oikawa pouted internally.

“Thanks for waiting,” he said quietly.

“What?” Iwaizumi asked, having already moved to the door and looking at Oikawa with an impatient tap of his fingers on his arm.

“I said let’s go,” Oikawa said and grabbed his bag.

They left the school in silence. The cooling effect of the shower didn’t last long in the heat of the afternoon.

“We should have stayed longer,” Oikawa said. “If we stayed until dark it wouldn’t be so hot.”

Iwaizumi didn’t say anything, grunted quietly, but Oikawa noticed the way his friend glanced at him from the corner of his eyes. It wasn’t unusual for Iwaizumi to be quiet, but there was something odd about today. Oikawa couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He didn’t know exactly how to go about probing his friend for answers without really irritating him; today was one of those days when Iwaizumi seemed ready to explode.

“Will I be coming over?” Oikawa asked.

Iwaizumi looked at him properly.

“Huh?” he asked. “Wasn’t that the plan? Or did you change your mind?”

Oikawa shook his head.

“Just making sure, Iwa-chan,” he chirped and grinned in the way he knew Iwaizumi found extremely annoying.

“Maybe you should go home after all,” Iwaizumi grumbled.

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa whined and took a hold of the boy’s arm. “Don’t be that way.”

Iwaizumi pushed him away, and Oikawa let him.

“You’re annoying,” Iwaizumi said.

What Oikawa heard was “I’m worried about you,” and it made him frown. Ever since he had busted his knee there had been something delicate between him and his best friend. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t know how to approach it, which words to choose to not break the balance of their friendship.

“You’re thinking too much,” Iwaizumi said.

Oikawa looked at him walk just before him, how his back was straight and hair still moist from his shower, and he hurried his steps to walk beside him again.

“Maybe,” he said and grinned.

Iwaizumi looked at him but didn’t relax his face. So there really was something that bothered him. It wasn’t unusual for Oikawa to be the more expressive of them, but the way Iwaizumi carried himself indicated a barrier that he didn’t want to cross.

“Are you hungry?” Iwaizumi asked suddenly.

Oikawa turned to look at him in surprise.

“I’ll buy you milk bread,” Iwaizumi said.

“O- okay,” Oikawa replied, not sure how to react.

Oikawa didn’t know why Iwaizumi buying him milk bread felt so odd right at that moment. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, it wasn’t the first time that he suggested it out of the blue, but the way he said it carried a weight that Oikawa couldn’t comprehend. He followed Iwaizumi to the store and accepted the milk bread with many thanks.

He hummed while he ate, pretending that Iwaizumi was not shooting glares at him.

There were times when Oikawa had asked himself why he and Iwaizumi remained friends at all. When they were little kids it was different: part coincidence, since their mothers were friends, part a habit after having been together for so long, but there was also the part of want, a curiosity, an absolute need to stay together, and sometimes Oikawa couldn’t understand where it came from.

Had he always known, somewhere deep down, that Iwaizumi was special?

He shook his head and smiled.

Special.

What did that mean?

It wasn’t the first time he thought about it; he had thought about it countless times at nights when he couldn’t quite fall asleep and remembered something Iwaizumi had said or done during the day. He had thought about it over and over again, and could never quite answer the question that had haunted him for quite a while now: where did friendship end? What were the boundaries of the love you feel for a friend, for a good friend? For your best friend?

As Oikawa thought about this question, he hoped that his friend wouldn’t notice. He hoped that the fact that he was holding a pen, a notebook open in front of him and his eyes glued on a text book was enough to keep any suspicions at bay. But he did also realise that he hadn’t written down anything ever since they had opened their books to study, he hadn’t turned the page while Iwaizumi was focused on his work, writing down things that he deemed important.

Iwaizumi got a small frown when he thought hard. Oikawa had noticed it back in elementary school; he had looked up at his friend and found him intensely focused on his work with his brows crinkled just slightly. He had seen it then and decided to keep quiet about it. It was his secret, something that he knew about his best friend. He liked to imagine that nobody else knew it, although it was unrealistic. But what nobody else knew, was how peaceful it was to sit by the same table with Iwaizumi’s concentration, alone in the room. It was like there was a bubble surrounding them, and Iwaizumi was the bubble.

Iwaizumi lifted his head and glared. Oikawa shrugged.

“What are you staring at?” Iwaizumi asked.

Oikawa wanted him to sound irritated, but he sounded tired. The boy in front of him sounded like he was tired of the weird dance they had developed some time ago, and Oikawa knew exactly how it felt.

“You’re pretty sexy when you stop being angry,” Oikawa smirked.

Iwaizumi frowned.

“Stop it,” he said with no true passion behind the words.

At this point they were just words, they had become the phrase that had been repeated too many times and had lost all meaning.

“I don’t want to,” Oikawa said.

He didn’t know what to call it, and he wanted to find out. He had spent too much time trying to find the answer from within him, when his answer lay right there, in Iwaizumi.

“I’ve already told you I don’t like it,” Iwaizumi said, frown deepening, but the darkness in his eyes was exhaustion rather than exasperation.

Oikawa put down his pencil and looked at the way a sprinkle of lead broke off the tip.

“Iwa-chan,” he said, but didn’t continue.

He had said many things before. There was nothing left to say.

Oikawa shuffled closer to Iwaizumi, around the table, right next to his friend. He could feel the warmth of the other boy, knee radiating against his own, and it felt right. For once there was something that felt right.

Iwaizumi was still frowning at him when Oikawa leaned closer and brought their lips together in a quiet kiss.

“I want you to take me seriously for once,” he said, forehead leaning against Iwaizumi’s for a moment longer before pulling away.

-

Iwaizumi remembered being happy on a sunny day when he was carrying a net and looking for bugs to catch, and Oikawa was behind him, occasionally stopping to toss his new volleyball up to the air before running to catch up to Iwaizumi.

“Iwa-chan,” his friend called for him, and he was annoyed at his slowness, but did always find a reason to stop and wait.

He could never tell if it was a real day, because when he thought back to his childhood with Oikawa, every single day felt like that: sunshine on his shoulders, scabs on his knees, and Oikawa’s voice calling out to him.

They went to the same schools, they ended up in the same class, and Oikawa had long ago become a constant in his life. “Iwa-chan” seemed to be the centre of Oikawa’s world, and he found it endearing. It made him feel important.

Until one day it changed. Rather than talk about him or them, Oikawa’s focus shifted on the talented first-year in their team. It became “Kageyama this” and “Kageyama that”, until it turned to “Tobio-chan”, and it seemed that all their conversations became complaints about the boy.

“Stop obsessing over him,” Iwaizumi found himself telling his friend numerous times, yet it had no effect.

Or it did, but not the effect Iwaizumi had thought: Oikawa seemed to withdraw from him. It was so gradual that he didn’t notice before he was walking home from school alone and missing the annoying sound of Oikawa’s chatter.

 _Where is he anyway_? he asked himself, and his heart clenched when he realised that he wasn’t sure.

That was another thing for him to think about: why did he feel like he had lost a part of himself? Oikawa wasn’t his only friend, not even by a long shot, so what made him so important? They had been best friends for years, but that didn’t have to mean it would always be so. Sometimes friends just drifted apart and it wasn’t the end of the world, but the thought of never talking to Oikawa properly again or going home together was painful.

And Iwaizumi had decided: if Oikawa was pulling away, he would simply have to push harder to make sure that they wouldn’t grow apart.

He found that Oikawa had never gotten over his obsession with _Tobio-chan_ and his talent, and it pissed him off so that they often ended up fighting, but at least Oikawa was there, and Oikawa was opening up again, and it felt right. Even hitting Oikawa felt right in all its wrongness, and to apologise he held hands with the teary boy all the way home, finding it very hard to let go once they were there. In fact, Iwaizumi found himself looking back to Oikawa’s hands and remembering how peaceful it had felt to hold them.

Iwaizumi was still thinking about holding Oikawa’s hand in high school. When Kageyama was history, it was easier to be with Oikawa again without getting frustrated, although Iwaizumi knew there was still a secret part of Oikawa that he wasn’t allowed to see, and he wasn’t sure what it contained. He wasn’t sure that he even wanted to know. He only wanted Oikawa to look at him the same way he was looking at his childhood friend.

It was hardest when they were alone, together in a quiet room and sitting close to each other, when it would have been easy to just reach out and take a hold of the hand that was resting on the table when Oikawa was rolling his pen in his other hand while thinking. There was a weird silence between them, and Iwaizumi wasn’t sure if it was real or if he was imagining it. He used to know exactly what Oikawa was thinking, but now he didn’t know anymore.

“What would you say if someone close to you was gay?” he asked once.

Oikawa looked at him, long and hard, and Iwaizumi willed his face to stay blank while his heart was racing harder than ever before.

“I don’t know,” Oikawa finally said and shrugged. “What should I say?”

Iwaizumi shrugged too and changed the subject, but ever since that day he wondered if Oikawa had guessed.

The question that now haunted him was: “Has Oikawa realised that I like him?”

His crush had started out innocent: he had the simple urge to sit next to Oikawa and hold hands and _be_ with him. However, now Iwaizumi was finding his eyes wandering to Oikawa’s body in the showers, in the changing room. It wasn’t the first time Iwaizumi had seen him naked or partially naked, but he felt like now he _saw_ him for the first time. And it stirred his core, and he couldn’t face Oikawa after he had looked at his hips and thought about holding him.

Sometimes he stayed awake at night and thought about Oikawa’s body, and in the morning he was purposefully grumpy to avoid blushing when Oikawa looked at him with his deep eyes.

It didn’t last long before Oikawa must have noticed something was going on. There was no other reason for why the boy was suddenly acting so differently around him – so willing to be the subject of his secret daydreams. At first Oikawa simply got a little touchier, and Iwaizumi did his best to swallow down all the dread of having been found out, chanting “he doesn’t know” in his head until it felt like the truth. Iwaizumi could deal with it, because Oikawa was just being himself, having a whim that required him to be more physical with his friends.

By third year, however, it was more obvious: Oikawa’s dashing smiles were directed at Iwaizumi more often, that twinkle he usually only reserved for his most eager fans now present in his eyes and smile, and it made Iwaizumi extremely uncomfortable to be in the receiving end of those smiles. He wanted to jump out of his skin just to escape the reality that Oikawa had figured it out. Not to mention the jokes, the flirty words Oikawa was throwing into their normal conversation, the way he would lean closer, whisper, talk so close to Iwaizumi’s ear that he could feel the vibrations of Oikawa’s unusually low voice in the air.

He couldn’t take it.

Iwaizumi wondered what Oikawa was trying to achieve. He thought about it every single night, ruining his sleeping completely, before he decided that he had to find the courage to confront his friend. His heart was beating fast, his hands were trembling when he looked Oikawa in the eyes and said:

“Stop fooling around. I’m tired of your jokes.”

Oikawa looked at him, long and quiet, eyes wide and searching, and Iwaizumi wondered what it was that he could see. He waited, until Oikawa turned his head away. He didn’t say anything. Iwaizumi waited, but Oikawa stayed quiet and returned to his homework as if nothing had happened.

Iwaizumi didn’t know what to think, but he calmed himself down by assuming that this was the end of Oikawa’s antics.

In a sense Iwaizumi had been right, but in another sense, he had been horribly mistaken; Oikawa may have stopped with the blatant flirting, but he was now watching Iwaizumi from afar. Iwaizumi could sense the eyes glued to him wherever he went, and he didn’t know why Oikawa was watching him so intently. Was Oikawa having a hard time dealing with his best friend not only being gay but being gay for him? It would have been easy to find out by asking, but Iwaizumi didn’t have the guts to ask when Oikawa looked at him like he was a snack waiting to be consumed.

Oikawa had been especially attentive of him that day, so when they were trying to do their homework and Iwaizumi noticed Oikawa watching him with an appraising look on his face, Iwaizumi couldn’t take it.

“What are you staring at?” he snapped.

Oikawa lazily shifted and cocked his head to the other side.

“You,” he said, as if it was plain and simple.

“Why?” Iwaizumi asked.

“Because I like you, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa replied.

Iwaizumi prayed that his cheeks weren’t as red as they felt when he looked at Oikawa with a furious glare.

“Stop it,” he said. “Stop saying crap like that.”

“Why?” Oikawa asked.

Iwaizumi couldn’t tell what the other boy was really thinking. Maybe Oikawa simply didn’t realise how much it already hurt him to know that his feelings would never be returned, maybe Oikawa just couldn’t understand how horrible it was to keep rubbing it in his face.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said, and Oikawa dropped it.

It seemed that Oikawa was willing to drop everything except volleyball. He was back to practising way more than everyone else, telling Iwaizumi to head home before him because he would take a while longer, and Iwaizumi let him be. He figured that it might do them good to be apart for a while, do their own thing. Maybe it would help him forget about the intense burn in his gut whenever he looked at Oikawa when the boy didn’t notice, how his face was balanced in a way that made Iwaizumi want to stare at him until the end of days.

Iwaizumi’s plan of forgetting his feelings for Oikawa had seemed so simple, but it ended up working exactly the opposite way: he was now paying Oikawa much more attention, looking at him every chance he got because he knew that they wouldn’t spend the evening together. Maybe it was a good thing, because that’s how he noticed that something was off.

“How long did you practise yesterday?” he asked one morning, when Oikawa showed up with a shadow over his eyes.

“Not very long,” Oikawa said and laughed. “I’m just having a good flow now, Iwa-chan.”

Iwaizumi nodded, and when Oikawa told him to leave with the others that afternoon, he pretended to leave but stayed behind instead. He sat in the empty locker room, eyes fixed to the door, waiting for Oikawa to show up. He lost all understanding of time, it stretched in the silence, and he didn’t want to look at the clock on the wall only to find it had only been 15 minutes instead of the hour it felt like.

When Oikawa finally opened the door and stepped inside, Iwaizumi had been getting so restless that he was pacing the room wondering if he should simply go to the gym to see what Oikawa was doing. They both stopped in their tracks, Oikawa’s hair heavy with sweat as he stared at Iwaizumi in disbelief.

“How long did you stay yesterday?” Iwaizumi repeated his earlier question.

Oikawa didn’t say anything. He glanced at the clock before looking back to Iwaizumi briefly before turning his head.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” Iwaizumi said.

Oikawa stepped inside the room and closed the door. He didn’t raise his head, didn’t look at Iwaizumi. He quietly undressed and went to take a shower. Iwaizumi waited, listening to the water hit the floor, thinking that he should have realised sooner.

When Oikawa had gotten dressed they headed home together in silence. Iwaizumi wanted to reach out and take a hold of his friend’s hand, but he didn’t.

Another thing they didn’t do was talk about it. The very next day Oikawa announced that he had sprained his knee, and Iwaizumi merely nodded. After Oikawa was well enough to practise properly again, he stopped telling Iwaizumi to go ahead, and Iwaizumi made sure to not leave the gym before Oikawa did. It didn’t stop Oikawa from trying to extend his practise, and they often ended up being the last ones to leave.

Oikawa’s clothes didn’t look like they fit him well at all. Iwaizumi wondered if the boy was hiding a complete side to himself that he wasn’t allowed to know about. It hurt him to think that sometime in the past he had known everything there was to know about his best friend. It hurt to think that right now it seemed that there was more that he didn’t know than what he knew.

Oikawa wouldn’t talk about it. Iwaizumi didn’t know if he should push it, so instead he bought Oikawa milk bread while feeling like he had been an inadequate friend.

The uneasiness didn’t leave him at all. They were sitting down in his room, doing their homework, but Iwaizumi found it hard to concentrate. He forced himself to read the paragraphs in the book over and over until he could write down something that might be important, but the words didn’t stick. He turned the page, and all he could really think about was Oikawa and the feeling that had been burning inside him for years.

He could feel Oikawa staring at him. He had felt it for a long time now, and it was throwing him off the homework even more. He frowned before looking up.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asked.

Maybe being friends with Oikawa was not a good idea. Maybe he should find a new best friend, someone who he didn’t love so completely, someone who wouldn’t hide his problems from him. He hadn’t slept well, thinking about the sadness in Oikawa that he couldn’t touch. He wanted to fix it, but how could he.

Oikawa’s knees were nearly touching his when they sat closer, Oikawa’s body was warm, and Iwaizumi thought about pushing him away to keep himself from leaning closer.

Oikawa’s kiss was shy, and his words soft.

“I want you to take me seriously,” he said, and Iwaizumi had to take a moment to understand what the words meant.

He didn’t understand after all. Oikawa was still kneeling next to him, biting his lower lip. Iwaizumi wanted to feel that lip against his again.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

He felt separate from his body right at that moment.

“It means that I’m not joking,” Oikawa said.

It was quiet. Iwaizumi looked at Oikawa, whose hair was still heavy from the shower but already curling back to its usual shape. Oikawa had his hands on his lap in tight fists, eyes cast down before they suddenly looked right at him.

“I’m sorry, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa said. “I know you don’t like me this way.”

Iwaizumi stared. His head was empty. His palms were sweating. Oikawa smiled awkwardly and shifted, looking away.

“Maybe I’ll go home,” he said.

The one thing Iwaizumi knew right at that moment, was that if he let Oikawa leave now, they would never go back to how they used to be. So, he took a hold of Oikawa’s wrist, causing the boy to turn around and look at him.

Iwaizumi kissed him like he had always wanted to. His fingers touched Oikawa’s soft cheek gently, lips searching for an answer, a confirmation that this was the right thing to do, and before he could pull away, Oikawa kissed him back, a hand tangling in his hair.

“I knew it,” Oikawa whispered in between kisses.

“Huh?” was all Iwaizumi was willing to say before diving back for a kiss.

“I love you, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa said before they kissed again and again.

And again.

And again.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something that would explore the shift in iwaoi relationship from friends to something more, and this is what happened.
> 
> I have [a dedicated writing blog](http://mean-whalewrites.tumblr.com) but also sometimes talk about writing [on twitter](http://twitter.com/mean_whale), but to follow me on twitter please be over 18!


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